This is John Bachelor.

Conversation with my colleague Colonel Jeff McCausen, United States Army Retired Artillery Men,

CBS News, about the Russian planning for the springtime.

The breakthrough at Avdivkow is said to be a predicate for a larger advance.

The DCI, Mr Burns, has said that the Russians will make strides in lesson if the US resupplies Ukraine.

Discussing this with Jeff I pointed to the lack of reporting of concentration of equipment or men or support personnel for an offensive which must be sustained.

Jeff doesn't see it either, neither in the north or the south of the Russian positions.

Therefore, delayed, question mark.

So this is Jeff McCausenon, what to watch for coming spring

as the weather changes towards dry conditions that would permit and advance.

I have not seen that, John.

I've been following that pretty closely.

There has been further demands upon the Russian industrial base to move to a more wartime footing.

But we don't see them bringing up large-scale reserves or the associated logistics

that would allow them to exploit tactical or if you could call them operational successes like they enjoy have have difficult.

That being said it seems to me John we're in a race right now that race is between the Ukrainian's ability to get resupplied,

hopefully by the United States and the West. The Ukrainian's ability, frankly,

to build up their defenses because it appears that they had not established

really significant defensive lines they could fall back to if they had to pull back to

me have difficulty. So I'm sure they're doing a lot of digging in as we're talking

right now. The second variable of course is the weather. You and I both know the Don Voss Basin this time of year is spring. It's heavily muddied at the moment and therefore a large mechanized heavy

operational movement will be very very difficult and in the last variable of

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